Mark 14:24 to Jeremiah 31:31

NT Text: Mark 14:24

OT Source(s):

• Jeremiah 31:31 ("Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah")

Source: Beale & Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007); Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Reference Type: Allusion

Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment + Longitudinal Theme

Anchor Text: Jer 31:31-34 — The New Covenant

Significance: At the Last Supper Jesus says of the cup, "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Mark 14:24). The phrase is a composite allusion: the wording "blood of the covenant" reproduces Exodus 24:8's Sinai blood-ratification, while the covenant frame and the announcement of a covenant inaugurated by sacrificial death activate the new covenant that Jeremiah 31:31 alone in the OT names (bĕrît ḥădāšāh). Mark's earliest text lacks the explicit kainē ("new") preserved in Luke 22:20 and 1 Corinthians 11:25, but the covenant-by-blood logic is unmistakably Jeremianic — and the genitive "for many" (echoing Isaiah 53:11-12) ties the cup to the forgiveness Jeremiah 31:34 promised. Jesus thus interprets his own death as the moment the new covenant is cut. The old covenant was ratified with the blood of bulls sprinkled on the people; the new is ratified with the blood of the Mediator himself, poured out. The significance terminates not in a ritual parallel but in Christ glorious as the covenant-maker whose self-giving blood secures the heart-transformation and definitive forgiveness Jeremiah foretold — the cup is offered, made desirable, "for you."